


On Your Wings

by PandoraCulpa



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Ending, Angst, Gen, Nihilism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-19
Updated: 2012-08-19
Packaged: 2017-11-12 11:29:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,436
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/490401
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PandoraCulpa/pseuds/PandoraCulpa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always comes to this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Your Wings

**Author's Note:**

> Written in 2007 for the NANASF challenge, and inspired by the song "On Your Wings" by Iron and Wine.

"It always comes to this."  
  
The tang of salt on the wind made the young woman wrinkle her nose against the inevitable itch. But although her eyes ached from sun and exhaustion, and her feet burned in the sand, her arm was still strong. In a voice cracked and weary, she replied, "What's that? War? Isn't that a bit clichéd for you?"  
  
Her companion continued staring toward the slatey green water as it pounded itself into foam on the beach. The sun was only just hoisting itself over the horizon one glimmering ray at a time, picking out little glints of diamond on the wave peaks, but most of the beach itself was still wrapped in the tailings of night. He could have melted into it, had he slid down the dune from the peak where they stood, but he held himself rigidly motionless. Only his lank black hair fluttered in the incessant wind; his black robes were pulled close against his body and he was shivering.  
  
One corner of his mouth curled into a sardonic sneer, a nasty expression that somehow suited his thin face. "It's getting to be too much for you, isn't it?" he drawled with deliberate venom. A sudden fit of coughing shook him momentarily, but he recovered quickly enough, his black eyes glittering with cold anger that belied the humor in the grimace that stretched his face. Across his chest, his hands moved like pale spiders, clutching the fabric of his robes still tighter around himself.  
  
"You always were a miserable man," she told him. "Miserable and hateful. None of this has changed that about you." She shifted her weight, the sand sliding beneath her feet and sending tiny avalanches into the diminishing shadow on the beach.  
  
"I can't see why I should bother changing." He turned his face to her this time, and she could see the yellow stains on his teeth when he leered at her. "It wouldn't make any difference, now would it?" Her silence gave him his answer, her face stony, red hair snapping in the wind. His nasty grin faded, and he turned once more to the beach.   
  
"That's what I mean," he said casually, almost as though to himself. "None of it makes a difference. It's all futile, isn't it?"  
  
"Hardly," came the curt reply. Tired eyes ablaze with newfound energy, she lifted her chin to fix him with the full force of her stare. "Harry's won, hasn't he? You Know Who is dead, and all the Death Eaters that followed him are on the run. The Dementors and other Dark creatures that remain have also been scattered." Now her lashes drooped to half-cover her dark eyes, and her lips twisted bitterly as she added in a harsh whisper, "He's beaten you, too."  
  
If she had hoped to provoke a rise in him, she was disappointed. He continued to look silently down toward the waters edge, where grayed shapes were beginning to take form in the gathering light, his face masked of all emotion. A single gull soared past, mewing forlornly, and for a moment she thought that it would land at the edge of the surf. But it flipped its wings at the last minute, launching back to the air before its webbed feet quite touched the wet sands and it flew away, crying like a lost child. Her eyes followed its flight, paralleling the shoreline, but his gaze never wavered from the beach.  
  
"If any were to have survived this fiasco intact," he began, as though she hadn't spoken, "it would have been I. Was anyone else so handily given the opportunity to seize onto whichever side appeared victorious? Could anyone, Death Eater or member of the Order, as easily declared his allegiance a clever ruse, should the tides of war turn as they are wont to do?" His voice grew harsh as he spoke, although his face remained calm, still. "Do you begin to see, Miss Weasley, how little reason there is to any of this?"  
  
"So because you aren't on the winning side, the world is somehow unfair; is that it?" Her eyes were back upon him, dark and snapping. "Sorry, but I haven't much sympathy. I lost two brothers in this damned war, both of whom were better men than you."  
  
His thin lips pulled back into a tight smile. "Doesn't that prove my point?"  
  
The wand in her fist came up, as if to hurl a hex, but he simply stared into her eyes and smiled that awful, mocking smile. The tableau froze, and held for an interminable time; she, locked in midcast, while he grimaced a few paces away. Finally- it could have been any amount of time- he stirred, lifting his arm to point down where the breakers rolled across the sand, and the world began to move once more.  
  
"Look," he demanded of her, bony finger stabbing emphatically downward to the shoreline. "There they are, as they've been all night. As they were when you broke my wand, right alongside them. And answer me this- can you tell them apart? Noble wizards and witches, who fought for all that is good and right, and the vilest of the vile, and can you differentiate a single one among them?"  
  
Like one in a daze, she turned, reluctantly casting her eyes down to the scene he indicated. The light had finally reached the strange shapes that lay just within the ocean's reach, and now she saw it illuminating woolen robes, darkened by the water. Thin wooden wands shone like needles, half buried in the wet sands, and the restless breeze lifted strands of hair, blonde and brown and coppery like her own, into the air, but besides this and the water, nothing else moved. The surf rolled in heavily, passing completely over one of the corpses and causing its hand to wave at her in an awful parody of life, but no matter how she strained her eyes, she couldn't recognize a single face. Pale, bluish skin, and slack, vacant features; in death, they all looked the same.  
  
"Futility," he hissed softly, and she whipped back to face him. "No matter how we scuttle about and waste our time here, the end result is the same. And there it lies below us. Now," he said with an exasperated sigh, "aren't you going to kill me already?"  
  
She looked shaken to the core, but she answered him levelly. "I thought that Harry would want the privilege."  
  
He shrugged, and pulled his robes close once more. "It doesn't matter," he said. "Dead is still dead."  
  


~*~*~

  


It was around midmorning when he found her, staring down from the top of a dune at the breakers as they crashed on the sand. All the color appeared to have drained from her; she was as pale as a corpse, and even her bright hair seemed tarnished in the sunlight. Beside her was sprawled a familiar shape, as ugly as ever, his face twisted into a smile that might have been triumphant. For a long time he stood beside her, looking down at the cold face of the man he'd known as a traitor and murderer. But she was there, and even though she looked like death had visited her too, she was alive, and he was grateful.

"Ginny," he said, and brushed his fingertips across her shoulder. She started, as if only then aware of his presence, and turned wide, staring eyes to him.

"Harry," she breathed, and her mouth continued to shape words, but beyond his name no sound came out at all.

"It's okay," he told her reassuringly. "It's all over now. It was a close thing, but it's over, and we won. We finally won."

Her lips stilled, and both of their gazes dropped to the body in the sand beside her. In death, Snape looked much as he had during his life- disapproving and angry, and yet there was that smile of almost exultant satisfaction. A swift stab of anger coursed through Harry as he looked at his former Professor, and he glanced over at Ginny's pale face.

"I thought you were going to leave him for me to deal with," he said slowly, not sure how she would react. "You shouldn't have had to do it."

She wouldn't look at him; her gaze drifted from the dead man's face back down to the waves, and in the quiet of the morning he sighed, and said, "It doesn't matter. He's gone now."

Ginny looked back at him then. "I know," she told him dully. "It doesn't matter at all."


End file.
